Friday, 1 August 2014

Teutoge Del Castillo jumped from shock more than fright. He had been in isolation for…. for … He wasn't quite sure, but he had been here for some time now shackled in this small cell. Had he really missed a new arrival? No surely he would have heard the door open, the shackles being clasped, and the prisoner's protestations, with claims of innocence or defiance!

He had been awoken a few times by the echo of footsteps drifting down the hallway beyond his cell door or the infernal clanging and rattling of pipes that preempted the arrival of his nutritious ‘slop'.

At first he had thought there had been some terrible mistake, a case of mistaken identity or another one of those terrible pranks that his ‘fellow' Officers had played. He had been due for one, it had been too long since the last one, and they had been getting progressively worse.

As the four hulking behemoths that had man handled him into his current confines had grabbed him he had given his name and rank and thrust his commission papers under their noses. He had received a blow to the head for his protestations and the papers had been knocked from his grasp and kicked into the gutter. How very dare they, he had worked his rear end off to get those papers, no matter what anyone else said. As the papers sank into the cesspool of human waste and detritus he had threatened these imbeciles' with the Emperors fury. The first and last noise he had heard from these hulking brutes was that of grating raucous laughter.

He had been brought to this place and shackled like some common miscreant. As the brutes left a shadow had appeared in the door way.

Monday, 12 May 2014

I finally gave myself a kick up the backside to get my dragondrakes finished.

I did a post a while ago showing some progress so don't plan to write anything, just a quick splash of some pictures. I really do need to learn to take better pictures.

The first 2 I had a rough idea of how i wanted them to look and just wanted to get them done. The 3rd I got a little bit more confident and hacked up the base model a little so its hunched over its prey ready to unleash the fiery fury.

They will hopefully be getting their first proper run out tonight ......... I know 3 heldrakes in a list will make me 'THAT' guy but I doubt they will all make it out for a dragons night out again any time soon. "Hey, whilst we are all together why not invite our very grounded cousins".

It's a family reunion.

I think I've done a fairly decent job. The maulerfiend & forgefiend have had really positive responses as they have stuck to the GW concept. I'm thinking that the drakes will get a mixed reaction. My simple reply will be it only cost me about 12 to make the 5 of them & I have enough to make another.

Criticisms aside, though please do leave any you have, should I make another maulerfiend or a plasma-dragonfiend ?

Monday, 28 April 2014

It's been a long while without posts on here and unfortunately I've not got time for detailed blog posts, battle reports, etc. anymore with changes with work patterns and family life.

In the mean time, I've been building up Tau and Tyranid armies across the last 12 months and found myself with a free evening yesterday, with which I decided I would do some test schemes for both forces.

These were the ultimate speed paint tests and the main thing (with my
limited painting time) was to get one done from undercoat to washed,
within 20 minutes.

Tau - These guys are based on the Tau from the Medusa V campaign from a couple of years back. I've always liked the idea of white armour for them and definitely wanted a colour scheme which was different from my other armies. The white was really quick to paint, my only concern would be for when it comes to painting the vehicles. The test model is a Tank Commander stuck on a base, but I'm optimistic this will be better on a proper Fire Warrior that has more armour.

Tyranids - A few years ago I did have some Tyranids painted up in the same scheme and really liked it. It's based on a Guy Haley article on speed painting from an early 300ish White Dwarf. I used to use a Chestnut Ink on the body, but tried with Nuln Oil now. The most important thing for these guys is that they are quick to paint. I really love the contrast of the cream carapace against the brown body.

With practice and a few more, I'm optimistic that I can reduce the painting time to <10 mins per model start to finish. I wasted a lot of time on the Tau by painting the cloth first and then the armour. If I were to have slopped on the grey base of the armour, then overbrushed the white, then painted the cloth etc. it would have been significantly quicker.

In other news I've not played 40K for a while as I've been getting involved with Malifaux, which I really love and would like to do a proper intro post to that separately (whenever I can find time). I'm currently painting up my Lady Justice plastic crew and have a Mei Feng crew ready to go after that.

If you've not given Malifaux a go before, get involved! It's fun and cheap to get started with. It's allowing me to spend a lot more time on detail of minis, something which I've abandoned whilst painting hordes of Orks, Marines, Guardsmen etc.

Monday, 13 January 2014

Saturday morning I woke up like a giddy schoolboy, it was new Codex day! All through the week I had been hearing the doom and gloom over the changes people had found. Despite all of this though, it's still the book I've anticipated getting my hands on the most in the last couple of years - purely because of this hate.

I'm the sort of person that if someone says something is bad, it makes me want to use that unit / character / vehicle all the more.

Whenever a new book comes out, there always seems to be some kind of "ripples in a pond" effect of hatred. One or two "notable" voices / blogs / sites have their opinion and everyone seems to snowball off of whatever that opinion says, even before they've read the full codex and can see the entire picture.

So, over the weekend I had a bit of a skim read and to be honest, I really like it. It goes back to the Monster Mash style lists of 4th edition, but importantly, there's now a load more monsters rather than just various different Carnifexes.

"BUT WAIT! YOU LIKE THIS ABOMINATION OF A CODEX?!"
Yes. Yes I do, and here's why.

"They've removed Spore Pods, how are we supposed to get anything anywhere now?"
Aside from the Chapter House rubbish side of it, it means that the Nids don't just get to copy Space Marine tactics. Warriors, Gaunts and Fexes were never supposed to be the ones getting dropped onto the opposite side of the table - there's now various flyers for the speed along with Rippers, Raveners and the Mawloc that can deep strike by tunnelling in. Tunelling always made much more sense to me.

Ultimately, Drop Podding is a Space Marine thing to do - other armies don't get equivalents, why should Tyranids? The more fitting thing for them is Spawning (a unique mechanic for Nids) and Tunelling. This coming from the guy who bought 20 Dragon Eggs off eBay last year for a 5th edition Nid army.

"Synapse is rubbish now! My Gaunts can hurt themselves / flee off the board / etc."
Good. That's the way Synapse is supposed to be. With the 5th edition codex bleeding over into 6th edition rule changes, what you ended up with was actively wanting your Hormagaunts to be outside of Synapse range so that they got Rage and extra attacks.

The only thing I will concede on this is that I think a 1-3 for the lowest level of Synapse (i.e. the bad one) is a bit harsh, but again, this promotes you needing to keep stuff in Synapse range / extend your Synapse range / take more Synapse creatures.

"But they made the Tervigon rubbish!"
I've not read the Tervigon entry properly yet, all I've seen is that you now can't spawn then move your Gaunts, to which I say "GOOD!". See the Tervigon now more as a Transport vehicle, as opposed to launching yourself out of it however far it used to.

As for the fact you now need to take 30 Termagants to take a troop choice Tervigon? Again, that's good. I was fed up of seeing "The Scuttling Swarm" represented by 10 - 30 Gaunts and 1 - 3 Tervigons. Yeah it became swarm-like as the game went on, but 30 models is a good sign GW want to see hordes of Gribblies on the table as well.

"They got rid of the Doom of Malan'tai! How could they do this to me?!!"
Simple, they got rid of a character who was broken. Ever see a Tyranid army in a tournament without one? Point proven. For not much more than a basic Zoanthrope you got something that could do Psychic shriek to ALL units in a radius, in BOTH player turns, without ever having a downside to using it AND got stronger for doing so. I don't like seeing units get deleted from a Codex, but he was a crutch, plain and simple.

"They got rid of the Parasite of Mortrex too! How could they do this to me?!"
Said no one. Ever.

I can only remember seeing him 1 or 2 times mostly in a themed list with Warriors, Shrikes and Rippers. I heard someone complain about losing a Winged Synapse creature. Seems they forgot about the Hive Tyrant - but again, this falls into the "I always use the winged Tyrant in this way!" rather than "I need Synapse support for this stuff, maybe I can use the Tyrant?".

"But all the Bio-Artifacts suck!"
Not really, I just feel that they're costed properly. There's no auto-include artifact in this Codex, like there are in the previous 6th edition Codexes - Puretide Engram in Tau, Mantle of the Laughing God in Eldar, Black Mace in Chaos Marines, Grimoire in Daemons. I felt the same way about the Dark Angels artifacts, they're all middle of the road "handy if you need them and cool in some situations" kinda thing.

Considering how Synapse is, I'd expect people to start looking at the Norn crown, especially on a Winged Tyrant to help him support areas of the battlefield.

"Pyrovores are still rubbish! The internet told me they would be good!"
People were expecting AP3 / AP2 Pyrovores that could drop down in Spores and batter marines. They've gotten better in having AP2 melee attacks, but I see these more now as backfield "sweepers" and support. Keep them close to your home objective holders to clear up things like infiltrating Kroot, Orks, Scouts, etc.

"The Warlord table is rubbish too! Rolling a 1 is useless to me!"
Add more trees to your scenery collection then! Any time you don't include ruins, buildings, rivers / ponds, forests then you're limiting your game types. Understandably in Tournaments you don't get a say (unless you're Wood Elves in Fantasy, with your pet Forest). We're guilty for it at club (not including trees), mostly because we've not got many or that they're not in with the 40K scenery.

I think the rest of the traits are all pretty good. I've got a box of trees that I need to get on bases and I'll be adding them in regular rotation.

Other than that, I think the other Warlord traits are alright. As with most Warlord tables I've seen in Codexes, there's some that are "Meh" and some that are decent. That's why we roll a dice to see what you get!

"Tyranids can't take Rulebook Psychic Powers anymore? GIVE ME BACK BIOMANCY!"
Now, this is a touchy subject to a lot of people and one that will likely get FAQ'd back in.

Personally? I see the BRB powers as Warp based, to which the Tyranids should have no access to. Mechanically their Psykers function as everyone else does, to keep the rules simple, but I like the fact they've their own Psychic discipline. What I would have liked to have seen would be a few disciplines, rather than the one, which is why I think it will get FAQ'd.

The one I will conceed on is that Biomancy suits the Tyranids down to the ground and I expect them to get access back to it. If it doesn't happen, then I'm not going to lose any sleep, I'll just keep plodding on with the Codex powers.

Biomancy was a crutch for players to make their MCs nigh invulnerable, now you actually have to think about where your Psyker and MCs wade into / what units they get close to. Ultimately it's less about getting Iron Arm, Endurance, Warp Speed etc. and more about using the actual stats for the model you're using.

The reason why I think Nids will get Biomancy back, is that Chaos Daemons have access to it, and if you can have a Great Unclean One making himself Toughness Infinite, then Tyranid MCs should be able to as well.

"Scything talons are pointless now!"
When you consider pretty much every unit had Scything Talons and they're the "standard" Tyranid weapon, I can see the logic for toning them down. I wouldn't expect a Space Marine chainsword, the basic combat weapon, to have some kind of special rule or bonus involved with them that gives them rending or shred, for example (however fitting that maybe). It's just a loss you have to accept really in the grand scheme of it, however handy it was for the bugs.

-------

There's probably a ton more online hate that could be piled in here, but I've gone for the biggest and most vocal ones I've seen. I've not had a good enough read of the codex to go into too many specifics, so I could be wrong on some bits.

I'll probably also get a lot of flak for posting this off people who don't like the Codex, but personally I'm looking forward to finally painting my Nids (after starting them last January) and getting them on the table to play some games.

It's shook things up at least so we're not seeing the same 5th edition / early 6th edition lists over and over again with Swarmlord, Doom, min Gaunts, max Tervigon as troops, 3 Trygons, etc.

That's my two bob worth, anyone else fed up with the bile and hatred towards new codex and rules before they're even released properly?

So many people take rules snippets and debatable points out of context with the whole book or the grand scheme of the rules, it's getting really boring to hear.

If you like the models and the army, then use them and enjoy them. So what if something's more expensive than it was, so what if they've removed something from the codex, so what if something is different.

Friday, 10 January 2014

It's been a long while since I made a post on here. In this year I've had multiple projects to deal with at work, moved house and had another baby born, which has kept me from posting and away from hobby stuff mostly.

I'll keep this brief since I'm planning on doing a "here's my backlog and plans for the year post" soon.

It's been about 6 or 7 months since I last actually painted, but since new year I've managed to get some bits done. I finally got around to painting my magnetised Eldar vehicle weapons so that's all my Eldar army completely painted now.

Then the last few nights I wanted to paint an actual model as opposed to just weapons, so I had a Black Reach Marine captain lying around which I'd been wanting to use as a test for Blood Ravens paint scheme for a while.

It took me a lot longer than usual to paint him up, partly down to awkwardness of the model and details covering other details, but also trying to get a nice red colour on the armour.

Overall I think the black wash is too heavy, but that's also possibly down to where I left the model to dry in the new house (to keep my paint desk away from a grabby toddler) and also possibly because I've not painted for a while and slopped it on way too heavily.

I wasn't sure on what other colours to use for things like the banner and robes, as all I could find of Blood Ravens was black, red and cream along with green power sourcing.

I really enjoyed painting him though, was a welcome treat to paint a single model not tied to any army, although it's made me consider making a small Space Marine allied detachment of Blood Ravens.

So there we are. I'm going to try and get some Chaos Terminators painted up next and then that's the stuff on my paint desk cleared. After this, my aim for January is to get a test Firewarrior and Termagant painted up so I can decide on a colour scheme.

Hopefully I'll be a bit more regular with posting now things have eased up, but it'll mostly be hobby progress or thoughts on codexes / ebooks as playing time isn't much of an option currently.

Monday, 9 December 2013

Progress on the heldrakes has come to a halt as my wife rather unhelpfully threw away her hair pins I had set aside for the 2nd & 3rd drakes arms.

If you read my last post the baby we were expecting was a girl. I haven't had much free time to venture to the pound shops to get some replacements. With heldrakes on the back burner and whilst my 19 month old slept my mind moved onto other shelved projects for something to do.

I bought these some time ago on good old flea bay for a steal, £6 including P&P.

For this I got 6 teams of 10 'rangers' including a squad leader & a variety of heavy weapon options. I'm thinking autogun, plasma/melta & lascannon.

in addition to the basic bolter marine. (Apologies for the photo quality but they were taken quickly in case it was a long labour - it wasn't. I suppose I could have just retaken them then -- but this has been put together whilst trying to get the toddler to sleep).

The poses are a little static for these guys but they make perfect models for thousand sons. I didn't even need to buy the backpacks for these guys as I make use of my own or friends bitz boxes. When it came to the aspiring sorcerers to lead each squad I wanted these models to be a bit more individual. I bought 10 kromlech heads from ebay think they were £5 from flea bay, but a good deal I think for what you get.

A few chops here and a bit of green stuff later and I had my first 2 sorcerers:

Soon they will be ready to play alongside the big boys, which are currently sitting in my so far unused in 6th ed tzeentch daemons army box :

So, I have 2 squads of 10. I plan to make another 2 squads & then decide what to do with the rest. I was thinking of adding in 3 squads of 5 havocs and the last 5 for character/hq conversions and/or differently equipped sorcerers.

What do you think--- not bad for £11 --- but would it be straying too far from the rubric ???

Monday, 18 November 2013

Seeing as nothing has been posted on here in some time I thought I'd do a little post.

Warhammer 40k on a budget is not something I gave much thought to in the past. If I wanted to add a new unit I'd just nip to my local GW on and pick it up - its dangerous having a store just round the corner but alas/thankfully it closed. Most of my purchases were on a whim and a desire to build something there and then, usually at the weekend ready for a game on Monday. With the closure of this shop I could think whether I really needed it and the whim of online purchasing wasn't the same. Though I still got the occasional box or 2. Its left me with a massive collection, too much, but I just can't muster the strength to part with any :)

The crux of this post was with an unexpected arrival of my 3rd child (the others being 15 & 12) & consequently my wife leaving work there just isn't the money to purchase plastic krak anymore. The speed at which codexes have been churned out hasn't helped either as its a must to keep your army current. Then we decided baby 3 needed a playmate - baby 4 is due in 2 weeks yikes.

Anyway enough background to this post.With the release of the new chaos space marine codex I got a good deal on some cultists from eBay & was content with just adding these into my existing army, after a few conversions. My friends bitz box came in handy for guard & empire stuff so thst was free. It was only when my wife was clearing out the house that she came across some old kids toys.

Mega blok dragons x2. What a find !!!

I knew immediately what I wanted to do with these and a further route through the toy bin pile provided a few extra bits an pieces I would need.

Then it was time to stick the A-team music on loop. With much blood, sweat and greenstuff along with many profanities when something went wrong, or I stuck my fingers together again for the seventh time.

Designers note: you may get grief from your other half if you take bottle lids, all the drinking staws & other household items before they are finished with.

Eventually resulting in:

Maulerfiend - made this guy first purely for scary hitting power.

Forgefiend - After many an immobilised result on the mauler i finally got around to making Mr Big Guns.

After these were made but before they were painted I bought another 1 of these dragons with 3 slightly different ones, more suited to another daemon engine. Have a look on ebay they go for next to nothing. I saved money as they were a job lot on ebay :)

I've only just got around to making a start on the next project, which has proved to be a lot faster.

Helldrake - just the left hand claw to finish on this monstrosity then I'll probably get the other 2 done before painting.

Hopefully it will look as good as the mauler & forge fiends once painted - they looked a mess to before painting.

There's still much work to do but what do you guys think ?
Should I make another mauler or forge fiend ?
Would it make a huge difference to your decision if I told you that once finished I'll have 3 helldrakes & say 2 maulerfiens & 1 forgefiend for a total cost of £12?

Tuesday, 23 July 2013

For those of you who know nothing about the game (or have never heard of Star Wars................) its a space combat game between 2 factions, the rebels and the imperials. you have a certain amount of points to spend on ships and upgrades, you can pick 'named' pilots or standard fighters etc. You set the board up, you move, shoot and hopefully blast your enemy into space dust. The game flows very well, its easy to pick up (I think the basics took me 30 mins) and you can usually get a game done in an hour or so. Larger point games mean more 'named' pilots and upgrades etc so it can get a little bit more involved but its a lot of fun.
The best part is all the star wars quotes that you hear people saying, then you find yourself doing it. The game is worth it just for that!!!

I'm looking to see what others think of the game, all comments welcome